Carlos Fentanes
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The Miracles You Beg For Begin Here
Editor’s Note: What follows is not a beginning but a continuation. I first met Jorge under circumstances shadowed by chance and urgency, and from that moment he entrusted me with his writings about what he insisted on calling the “Virgin Mary.” The texts arrive like fragments of a dream—dense, broken, difficult to hold together. Don’t…
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You’ll Need to Break Your Habits
The following pages are the first of a series of fragments I received under circumstances I can’t fully explain. I’ve resisted the urge to “fix” them—only a few phrases were clarified where the handwriting dissolved into smudge. What remains is not a finished story, but the beginning of a dialogue already in motion.
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The First Fragment: Conversations with Virgin Mary
If you cannot forgive the child you once were, you will curse the adult you have become. A man who despises his younger self is like a house divided: forever repairing walls, never able to live inside.
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Remaining Seated, I Stood Up. Reflections on Authority, Censorship, and the Rules We Follow
Sometimes I think about the absurdity of customs. We follow them like lambs—not because they make sense, but because someone once told us to. Why sit at the back when the front is empty? Why turkey every Thanksgiving when I don’t even like it? Why drag a tree indoors every December and cover it with…
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Why Velázquez Painted Only One Nude — and Why Instagram Still Erases Them
On the persistence of cultural censorship across centuries Charles Darwin was never meant to become Charles Darwin. His father, a wealthy physician, expected him to follow medicine or the church — safe, respectable, predictable. The young Darwin’s passion for collecting beetles, rocks, and fossils seemed frivolous, even embarrassing. When he boarded the Beagle in 1831,…
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Joining the Dots
One afternoon, while leafing through a listless scroll of open calls—those desperate pleas for money masquerading as Art opportunity—I came across something peculiar. It wasn’t flashy, nor particularly detailed. Just a line or two, almost buried among more demanding announcements, It simply asked for artwork generated by artificial intelligence. “Seeking artworks generated with AI (…
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My Dad was a Monster and I loved him deeply.
On Christmas Day 2024, my father passed away at the age of 85. He was, in the truest sense of the word, a monster—but not the kind that lurks in shadows with fangs and claws. He was the kind only a father can be: imposing, untouchable, a presence that overshadowed everything around him. And I…
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Why People Don’t Buy Art: The Stories We Tell and the Rituals We Keep
For most people, the morning is a ritual of familiarity. My grandfather used to read the newspaper while the radio droned the morning news, offering him a constant stream of updates to critique over breakfast. My mother, more focused, restricts herself to the local news—traffic, weather, maybe a fire or two. My wife, in contrast,…
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Michelangelo’s Hidden Battle
In the early 16th century, the city of Florence found itself at the crossroads of artistic genius. The Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio, an imposing chamber that already echoed with civic pride, became the stage for a remarkable artistic duel. The city commissioned two of its most celebrated artists to adorn opposing walls…
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Love Conquers All, another story about censorship
In 1602, Caravaggio completed Amor Vincit Omnia, or Love Conquers All. It was the kind of work only Caravaggio could create: Cupid, standing with arrows in one hand, seems to tread casually over symbols of human accomplishment—armor, a lute, a lined notebook—suggesting that love supersedes all human endeavors. The painting was an instant sensation among Rome’s…
Carlos Fentanes 